Spore tops list of most pirated PC games of 2008

Well, obviously these being the biggest PC titles of the year is also a major factor; I was just being sarcastic.

2 - Well, I was just being stupid with this one.

3 - I prefer games on PC as well, but most ports from console games range from decent to awful.

4 - I guess we'll just have to disagree here.

5, 6 - I don't know if pirated servers really provide the same experience. Less players and most of the serious players will most likely buy the game. Good multiplayer would make me wanna buy any game.

7 - I was confusing this for GTA4.

8 - It isn't a bad game, but you can still be disappointed with a good game. And obviously no one gets their money back because they were disappointed; I guess you can always call in and pretend you didn't agree with the EULA and thus did not install the game, but still...

9 - That many games aren't worth buying.

10 - This was mostly a bad joke.

I'm glad we could reach an amicable settlement :P

5 hours? You need to upgrade your broadband!

5 hours at $8 per hour is $40 to buy a game. He wasn't talking about taking 5 hours to download one of the games.

Lol, yeah, I found out Fallout 3 is 35$ (PC) today a Circuit City. Which isn't that much, just buy the game please :D.

By the way, my comment was *supposed* to be a reply to wickedpheonix: "For all you people decrying piracy..."

Here is the thing, they would have lost that sales regardless if people who pirate did not buy the game and just let it be. Again as in my previous post I am not condoning pirates nor do I dl games, but I do feel that DRM is just stupid on a lot of levels.

Look at it this way. I have 4 computers in the house, I still can't play games with my brother cause then we would have waste money buying two sets of that game, which I personally find annoying.

"they would have lost that sales regardless if people who pirate did not buy the game and just let it be."

Yes, if people who pirated did not pirate or buy the game, the game company would not be in any better shape. But, I don't believe piracy leads to 0% loss in sales. (Admittedly, I also don't think that every incidence of piracy = 1 lost sale.) The thing is that people who pirate are already in a subcategory of users who would be interested in the game. Maybe they wouldn't have bought the game, but maybe they would have. I'm actually worried that a culture of piracy will become more common - that people's first instinct will be to pirate rather than pay for things. I also think pirates can convince themselves that they "wouldn't have bought that game anyway". Consider the thought-experiment where everyone thinks piracy is okay because [insert reason whatever here]. A large percentage of game buyers skip the whole "buying" part of the equation, but pirate software so that they can use it. Where does that leave the companies and workers who create this stuff? It means they're creating products that people want, and would pay for (if they had to), but won't pay for because they can pirate it. If piracy doesn't hurt anyone, then why does rampant piracy lead to those companies going bankrupt?

"Look at it this way. I have 4 computers in the house, I still can't play games with my brother..."

Yeah, I can understand that would be annoying. A number of game companies allow for a couple installs of a single game. The problem really comes in when people want to give free copies away to thousands of people on the internet.

I see your point, and I do believe that if there were no piracy then some of the people would have bought the game to play it, but a lot of them would not buy it. Then again, I come from a third world country and now an immigrant of Canada, I know lots of people back home that will not buy a game or any piece of software or entertainment if they cannot get it for the cheap price, but that is only for those countries.

That being said I would hate to see a culture of piracy as well, it is not healthy for the society. What I would like too see is that they start charging less for the games. As I said before, it would make me buy a lot more games than I do now.

And that thing is yes a lot of companies allow you multiple installs but you dont get multiple discs so if I am playing something, my brother can't. Which really sucks, I wish they would find a way around it somehow.

If developers start selling their games directly, then they could also charge less for the games, which could only mean good things for the consumers.

World of Goo was the best example of this. It was a new, innovative game, it was from a small developer, it got great reviews, it had low system requirements, it had (very soon) a large demo, it was sold at a low price, it was available easily and almost instantaneously, and it didn't have any DRM.

That wipes out 99.9% of all the arguments ever used to justify piracy... and yet it still apparently had a piracy rate of 90%.

I think people often get into piracy for the reasons mentioned, but i also think that once you get used to the idea of freely available media at the touch of a button, its pretty hard to get out of that view.

But i also think that many pirates are young, and as they grow up and get jobs a fair proportion will becoe paying customers. And (at least for movies/mp3s) those that download the most also tend to be those that buy the most...
... they are the "hoarders" or collectors.. those that just have to grab everything.

well... just based on a quick search...

Pro Evo 2009 top torrents:
top 4 torrents are all PS2 and PSP. Way more than any PC torrents.

and while fallout3 and farcry2 have more PC torrents than console ones, the number of console ones isn't insignificant..

In my opinion the PC has consistently delivered a more satisfactory experience for gaming. If it hasn't for you then you you must not have a decent rig.

Park Zero,

Yeah, that's an absolutely fantastic strategy...if one overlooks that console pirating exists. You've apparently forgotten that, for less than $50, a modchip could make any Xbox into a gaming pirate's wet dream. All it takes to play a pirated game on an Xbox 360 is a DVD-ROM flash. Banning those systems from accessing LIVE! isn't much of a deterrent when most pirates have no intention of using the service to play online or receive updates.

I hate console fanboys who suggest the PC gaming industry should go extinct due to piracy and profit margins because they have absolutely NO CLUE of what those repercussions would be. PC gaming drives hardware development; it always has and will. That hardware development then trickles down into console hardware development. Only a complete idiot would deny this relationship exists.

No console maker has the budget or technology to develop their own CPUs or GPUs in house. Don't believe me? IBM developed the Wii's Broadway processor (it's essentially the same PPC core found in the Gamecube), IBM developed the Xbox 360's Xenon processor, and Cell was developed as a joint venture between IBM and Toshiba with some very small involvement from Sony.

Have you ever wondered why we have multi-core, multi-threaded processors in our consoles? It's not because the industry you have such a hard on for was making technological breakthroughs, it's because the PC industry (including Apple hardware) had already set those standards years before.

The console GPUs I've seen people get in such a pissing contest over are, again, products only made possible by PC gaming industry. Nintendo's recycling the same Artyx/ATI design found in their Gamecube. The RSX found in the PS3 is a purely NVIDIA product with Sony's name on the die; that doesn't change the fact it's just a neutered Geforce 7800 GT. ATI heavily customed their X1800 to come up with the Xbox 360's Xenos GPU.

Hell, even if you take a look last gen, none of the big three developed their own chips in house. I've already discussed Nintendo. Sony's Emotion Engine was a joint venture between Sony and Toshiba (the GS was, likewise, a joint venture). The Xbox used Intel Pentium III Coppermine CPUs and the GPU was of NVIDIA design (of an existing product, nonetheless).

I suppose where I'm going with this lengthy novel of a reply is that the PC gaming industry sets the technological standard (and I haven't even mentioned software standards like DX or OpenGL) while the console industry merely follows that standard through technological hand me downs. Kill off that industry, you kill development, and your industry stangnates. Don't think for an instance a console maker would have moral qualms about selling you a slightly faster refresh of an existing product at a higher cost to fatter their profit margin, because one already does (Nintendo). Without the PC gaming industry, you'd be lucky at all to have something slightly better than the Xbox. Be very, very careful of what you wish for.

Oh, and Park Zero, I have a question to ask. Since you've made the suggestion that the PC industry should evaporate like water vapor due to piracy, can you explain why Fallout 3 was leaked to a console (the Xbox 360 specifically) weeks before a PC torrent appeared? Or how about the Gears 2 leak? Silly me...I forgot "pirates are much less of a factor" on consoles.